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Friday, November 30, 2012

How to Train Your Dragon (11.0)

I write. A lot.
On my laptop, which I place on my lap, not on a desk at eye level. One of the
things that has happened as a result is that, at an age when according to Men’s
Health I should be in my physical prime, my body is essentially 90. I can’t
turn my neck properly anymore; I wear a wrist brace when I type (which a
friend helpfully pointed out is “exactly like the one my grandma has”) to help
with the encroaching tendonitis and, on occasion, an eyepatch to combat the
eyestrain. Not the pirate kind.

Last year, I
invested in what I hoped would be the most body-saving tool yet: Dragon
Naturally Speaking Voice Recognition Software. Version 11.0.

With Dragon, I
would be able to dictate my writing, open computer applications, and send
e-mails—completely hands free! My only prior knowledge of Dragon came from my adolescence, when my dad bought version 0.0005 or whatever to help him dictate
medical stuff. I remember a lot of frustration. Tears. Bad words. What I don’t
remember much of was success.

Surely the technology is better by now, I told myself, as I bought version
11.0 off the overstock shelf at Walmart for half price.

I took it home,
opened it up, and prepared to enter the world of technologically enlightened.

The first thing
I had to do to “train” Dragon was read a passage from Alice and Wonderland
so that Dragon could document my little voice quirks. I was a bit
disappointed about this, since if there’s one thing I do well, it’s enunciate,
and I kind of liked the idea of feeling superior to all the people out there
who might struggle to use Dragon because they were Mumblepantses. I try to take
the small victories where I can get them.

But no, you
read for four minutes so you can train your Dragon to recognize your unique
voice and speech patterns and pronunciation.

You can also,
if you’re someone who makes up words/names, train Dragon to recognize your
creative additions to the English language. All you have to do is say “spell
that,” spell the word, then say “train.” You record yourself saying the word,
and Dragon will ostensibly recognize it in the future. This is more
time-consuming and infuriating than it might sound. Especially since Dragon
often doesn’t recognize words that are clearly words—like “asswipes” and “fuckwad.”

I don’t
actually use Dragon much. Mostly because it fucks up. Constantly. Then I end up
yelling at it, forgetting the microphone is still recording.I’ll look at my screen and see sentences that
make no sense, followed by “fuck fuck you stupid piece of crap ass shit.” Often
it devolves into a full on argument between Dragon and me.

Dragon has also
made writing sex scenes incredibly awkward. For some reason—maybe it’s the
lingering influence of my theater years—I can’t get it through my head that
Dragon doesn’t care how I say things.
Making my voice go up at the end does not mean Dragon will insert a question
mark. I have to say “question mark”—which Dragon inevitably transcribes as
“Russian mark.” Emphasizing certain words doesn't mean Dragon will use italics. Still, I insist on vocally acting out what I’m saying on the
off chance this will help Dragon understand. It makes me feel like I’m in a
porno. And the dog’s always listening, and it’s just…weird.

I’m probably
better off just typing and taking a lot of painkillers. But recently my wrist
has been acting up and I’ve been hitting the Dragon hard.

Here are some of this week’s Dragonisms. These are sentences as transcribed by Dragon. Followed by what I actually said into the microphone.

Dragon: “Him him that Playboy,” he said. "Why don't you all the him." I said to him she should, you cheap piece of shipped. What I Really Said: “That’s him, that’s my boy,” he said. “My dog popped all the balloons.” I said popped all the balloons, you cheap piece of shit.

Dragon: Maybe I should dedicate I linking like that do end the diving
bell and the butterfly. Would you like that Western mark if I replaced you with
some blinking soft were you discount candy ass been of my existence?

WIRS: Maybe I
should dictate by blinking like that dude in The Diving Belle and the Butterfly. Would you like that? If I
replaced you with some blinking software, you discount candy ass bane of my
existence?

If this is the future, take me back to my childhood with that boxy computer with the black background and the green text and the floppy disks. At least the screen was at eye level.

5 comments:

Haha, it really is! I didn't save it, but I recently said something totally innocuous to Dragon and it changed it to something about slapping. I was like, "OK, not what I said, but I can see why you'd assume..."